Name's Jason Thibeault. I'm an IT guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS, science of all stripes (especially space-related stuff), and debating on-line and off. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

Mock The Movie: Atlas Shrugged Part II transcript

In this movie: awful people being awful in order to destroy humanity for their personal profit. Also, wooden acting, and sadly enough, Robert Picardo.

And we still haven’t even gotten to John Galt’s damnable speech. They’re saving that up for parts 3 through 17, apparently.

I won’t lie. This wasn’t easy to mock. Not because it was too good, or because it was too bad — but because it was just fractally wrong and every scene made me want to scream “THAT ISN’T EVEN HOW REALITY WORKS”.

Comments

I was saddened to see Ray Wise in the trailer. It was a safe bet that guy would never get to do anything as great as Twin Peaks again, but unfortunately he seems unable to get any good parts at all. Your third paragraph there is exactly what I would have predicted of this movie, and why someone would have to pay me to watch it. Yuckers.

There were just so many damn things in this movie which I couldn’t get over and couldn’t type fast enough to point out. It was the cinematic version of a Gish gallop. The economics, science, engineering, politics, business management…it’s like fractal broccoli, if broccoli were made of cow shit.

Like Rearden turning down paying clients out of pure spite, instead of making money and most probably gaining allies. And railroad tycoons travelling everywhere by car. If we take the super-skills of our Randian heroes even half seriously, they should be able to build a fuel-efficient hybrid over a couple weekends. “The new ’16 Prometheus: built from ultra-light-weight Rearden Metal to be even more amazingly economical!” Also, asking a store clerk, who by implication probably can’t afford to fill a gas tank, if she’s ever ridden in a limo? Wouldn’t any decent person have at least a bit of “And then are we going to eat dolphin steak?” in their response? It’s like that web site which computed how much money Mitt Romney made by doing nothing, during the time it takes you to earn enough to pay the rent. Wouldn’t any store clerk offered a limo ride in that crapsack nation wonder how many hours’ worth of her paycheck are going out the exhaust pipe?

(What’s the canned screenplay response of the working-class woman who has been given an expensive necklace by her affluent, handsome admirer? “Oh, it’s beautiful…It must cost a fortune. I can’t accept this.” We’ve seen that movie, right?)

And then, when the movie is almost over, Dagny finally decides that as the face of her company, she should travel by rail. And then we finally get an acknowledgement that all the driving they’ve been doing is ruinously expensive, which is played as a big shock! moment. …the Hell? Yes, we knew that from your opening title cards. Why are you making a big deal about it now?! Do you not understand how writing works?

“Directive 10289″… I missed a great opportunity for an “Execute Order 66″ joke there. Also: what the fuck? The writers managed to be “topical” with a “bridge to nowhere” and some 99% references, but they missed that whole thing with the stimulus package? Where are the public-works projects, the new New Deal, the steps a plausible American government would actually take in an economic disaster? Sure, if your thesis is that gov’mint is teh evil, you could make all the bridges built by the WPA shoddily engineered. Then Rearden could actually have a principled objection to the State Science Institute using his metal, instead of the argument the movie actually gives us: “Because dick.”

On that note, what did the State Science Institute need 4,000 tons of Rearden Metal for? Why was their representative weaselly about it? Are they building a new facility which might (ghasp) create local jobs in the public sector? Is it for the scaffolding of a death ray? They’d have to work pretty hard to be more diabolical than John Galt, whose stated goal is the active destruction of civilization.

Oh, and let’s look at that horrible job experience which convinced John Galt that civilization had to go, that the smartphone of the world had to be bricked. Does it make any, you know, sense? We are told that the company for which he worked went under new management, who indulged in a fit of straw socialism, driving away the talent and bringing the company down. Come again? First, the more familiar pattern is management becoming less idealistic after the original owners leave (think Hormel). OK, then, suppose the new owners played against type and, after a few space brownies, decided to have a happy corporate love fest. How would that plan actually reach the implementation phase without anybody going, “Uh, guys, maybe scale it back a little?” Stretching the imagination, we might say that 20th Century Motors was privately owned, so there were no shareholders who could get upset at the risk to their shares’ value. The blunt accounting reality of setting up a new compensation system would set in pretty quick. We could picture, say, a company policy of financial aid in the event of well-documentable needs, such as endowing college scholarships for the workers’ children. But the scenario the movie gives us? Hardly. Pie-in-the-sky idealism ruining a company is the territory of scruffy startups, not established manufacturers which, we are told, are already going gangbusters.

And John Galt’s static electricity engine…oh, glob. There comes a point where ignorance of and indifference to science manifest as active disdain.

I won’t watch the movie, then again I can’t remember the last one I actually wanted to watch a movie, but the running commentary in this post was worthy of an Oscar it had me laughing so much. For watching this film you all deserve a service to humanity award and I hope you all make a full recovery.

Yes, it’s a massive plot hole around Rearden Metal. If Hank wouldn’t give up the formula, it would have yielded to the sort of analysis that could have been performed in any secondary school chemistry lab.

As for the motor, if the principle had been workable at all, there is still every chance that it might have been independently re-invented from scratch by someone with a mindset closer to Jonas Salk.